Israel Moves on Unrwa

Congratulations are in order to Israel’s police for taking over a UN facility at Jerusalem and for replacing the world organization’s blue banner with the Star of David standard. UN officials at New York may be apoplectic, threatening legal maneuvers against the Jewish state for allegedly violating treaty obligations and more. Oh, and the UN Relief and Works Agency also claims it owes not one shekel in taxes on its lucrative residence. Unrwa services are ostensibly dedicated to Palestinian Arabs’ grievances over the very existence of a Jewish state. In Gaza, several of Unrwa’s officials participated, alongside Hamas, in the October 7, 2023, atrocities. Israel, after cooperating with Unrwa since the agency’s inception in the aftermath of the 1948 war of independence, has finally had enough. Last year Unrwa was banned from operating in Israeli territory, including at its Jerusalem HQ. The Unrwa building at the capital’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood has been empty since October 2024, while incurring a $3.4 million tax debt to the Jerusalem municipality. Hence Israeli police entering the compound this morning. “Motorcycles, as well as trucks and forklifts were brought in and all communications were cut,” a UN spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, tells reporters. “Furniture, IT equipment and other property was seized.” Jerusalem says it tried to negotiate with the UN over its spiraling tax debt. Yet the UN insists it owes nothing. Taxing is “not applicable under the general conventions that cover the relationship between the UN and member states,” Mr. Dujarric maintains. A UN court at the Hague, he adds, confirms that “any executive, administrative, judicial, or legislative action against United Nations property and assets is prohibited.”While the UN threatens to drag Israel to one of its kangaroo courts, the issue is deeper than tax evasion or the fate of an empty building at Sheikh Jarrah, which the UN claims is an “occupied territory.” Why is Turtle Bay so obsessed with proving Israel a rogue state that it dedicates so much time and resources to “help” Palestinian Arabs? Unrwa is far from the only organ that, unlike other UN agencies, is exclusively dedicated to that cause. The co-author of “The War of Return,” Einat Wilf, tells our Benny Avni that Unrwa supports a “fifth generation of Palestine ‘refugees,’” who were born and raised in Gaza. “You give billions to people who, as far as they’re concerned, they’re not home,” she says. For them Gaza is “merely a launchpad from which to liberate Palestine from the river to the sea.” A film based on her book’s eye-opening critique of Unrwa was screened last week at New York. Unrwa was established to help Arabs who fled or were chased out during the 1948 war that Israel’s neighbors launched to strangle the nascent Jewish state. In 1950 the agency counted 750,000 Arab refugees. That number has by now ballooned to 5.9 million. One agency was established to assist all world refugees. Unrwa, though, is solely dedicated to Palestinians — and not to alleviate their plight, but to keep them as refugees until a “political” solution is reached. Unrwa maintains refugee “camps” — some shanty towns, others thriving cities — in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Even after a Palestinian Authority was established in Judea and Samaria, it kept refugees in “camps.” In Hamas-controlled Gaza, Unrwa grew into a wholly-owned subsidiary of the terrorists. President Biden and other world leaders suspended funds after Unrwa employees committed atrocities. Today Israel took the next logical step.

Israel Moves on Unrwa

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